Major earthquakes of the past 30 years

There were no immediate reports of fatalities, but quakes of this size in the region have caused massive destruction in the past.

Below is a list of some of the world’s strongest earthquakes in the past 30 years.

— April 25, 2015: A 7.8 magnitude quake in Nepal kills almost 8,900 people and destroys about half a million homes. A massive aftershock with a magnitude of 7.3 follows in May, killing dozens more.

— August 11, 2012: Twin earthquakes with a magnitude 6.3 and 6.4 leave 306 dead and more than 3,000 injured near the Iranian city of Tabriz.

— March 11, 2011: Nearly 18,900 are killed when a tsunami triggered by a massive magnitude 9.0 undersea quake slams into the northeast coast of Japan, triggering a nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi atomic plant.

— October 23, 2011: An earthquake of 7.2 magnitude rocks eastern Turkey, leaving more than 600 dead and at least 4,150 injured.

— October 8, 2005: An earthquake of 7.6 kills more than 75,000 people, the vast majority of them in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province and the Pakistani-administered zone of Kashmir state. Some 3.5 million are displaced.